peebee67

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20 dagen geledendiscuss

Yes. They actually made similar observations about each other, in that Bill is observing that Steve has a genius for marketing and picking clever people, as opposed to any particular knack for innovation or inventiveness of his own. But Bill is so much more gracious about how he says it and doesn't take anything away from Steve. He's genuinely impressed at how Steve has managed to somehow wrangle a seemingly impossible licensing deal from a famously obstinate cartel of rent-seekers.

vorige maanddiscuss

They pretty much are, too. It certainly reads like some tech job ads. Rock star with 30 years experience. Graduate wages.

vorige maanddiscuss

There's good evidence that it was expressly approved in the form of social media posts advertising the consignment on their social media pages. Difficult for them to argue either ignorance or that the arrangement wasn't authorised, both of which aren't really relevant to the demonstrated facts of the dispute.

vorige maanddiscuss

If he's truly a "senior" CIA official, he probably actually was a reservist for much of his career, and continued to claim leave for reserve duties after he was discharged. And payroll eventually did pick up on this, which sparked an HR investigation of his credentials, which turned out to be inflated, and only then did they start to look at what this guy was doing with all the money he was taking home. Payroll is probably the only entity in this story that was actually doing their damn job.

I'm curious why he was discharged now.

vorige maanddiscuss

All of the comments in this thread assume he was being investigated for his acquisition of comically large amounts of cash and commodities that he presumably left the building with in big bags with a dollar sign on them. They ignore the open secret that the CIA is cartoonishly out of control has been little more than a massive organised crime syndicate that happens to be on the government payroll for 20 years.

In all likelihood, his taking more than forty million dollars wasn't the suspicious behaviour that set him to being investigated. It's right there in the charge sheet. He was being investigated because payroll noticed he was fraudulently claiming leave that he wasn't entitled to. There's no routine oversight on who they're bribing with actual gold. There's still routine oversight on their payroll and HR practices. That led to them actually checking his resume properly, and when that was shown to be bullshit, only then did they actually look at what this guy was doing.

2 maanden geledendiscuss

Deliberately testing its survivability with that failure mode over different parts of the vehicle has been one of the major foci throughout the entire test campaign, and it has proven remarkably resilient. That generalisation pretty much does not hold for starship.

2 maanden geledendiscuss

I personally broke it by admonishing it for fucking up its last revision to my project.

3 maanden geledendiscuss

The headlines just write themselves at this point.

3 maanden geledendiscuss

That's right. SpaceX is likely a great business on its fundamentals, and starlink is probably even better. The meme-stock part of this is that they've swept all these different business up together. I would've loved the opportunity to invest in SpaceX and starlink, but I'm not convinced the AI and other parts of the business are anything other than a landfill fire. The orbital datacentre concept is just plain nutty and in a different way than most of Elon's major undertakings. Sweeping them all in together like this just creates a serious risk that the best space company in the world will go under when the AI bubble bursts.

3 maanden geledendiscuss

They'd tolerate it because they all poked a giant in the eye and it didn't go down. It's by far the cheapest route to peace any of them have.

USA could agree to it because it's not particularly dependent on that fuel supply and therefore would only pay the costs indirectly via market forces, which as the thief-in-chief pointed out, does (the parts he cares about of) their economy no harm as a net petroleum-product exporter, and above all else, they are losing the war.

3 maanden geledendiscuss

Absolutely none of that would happen. It's in Iran's interests to keep the oil flowing at a fee that everyone can stomach and that doesn't offend the sensibilities. $1 a barrel for a year of unprovoked war crimes costing them hundreds of billions of dollars, with the cost effectively shared by all, fits this description. Nor has Iran responded with the kind of zero-sum, suicidal, totalitarian foreign policy that is always attributed to them by their enemies. Serious commentators have all remarked at how restrained they've been during this war. It's almost as though sane people who intend to come to a realistic agreement that everyone can live with are running their foreign and defence policies.

3 maanden geledendiscuss

As you say, the shadow fleet exists because of sanctions. In other words, because the biggest bully on the block is committing de facto piracy with their navy. Pretty much the definition of blocking freedom of navigation. Their insurance paperwork not being in order justifies their seizure?

3 maanden geledendiscuss

Just pointing out that for the volume of these ships, it's not really a massive toll. It's honestly a bargain, paid for in a really easy to stomach way by the people who allowed this to happen: Everyone else.

3 maanden geledendiscuss

Nobody ever questions why the troll is living under a bridge.

3 maanden geledendiscuss

I realise he was making comedy, but breaking that down further I'd argue that dumb people can fool smart people for a little while that they're smart.

My social acuity has developed slowly, only after being repeatedly pounded into shape from mistakes, and quickly reading people is something that does not happen intuitively for me. I've been misled multiple times by people who, overall, I would now describe as just not that bright, with horrible consequences as the relationship developed. What they had in common is that they were all good at mirroring. Eg, They hear me use a technical term in an early conversation, they drop one or two confidently not much later, and before I picked up on what they were doing, I mistook them for an intellectual peer and let that early impression colour later ones. These days I'm much more attuned to it and have caught people doing it, along with the little microexpressions they pull when they think they've successfully deceived me. It's fun now, but it certainly didn't start that way.

3 maanden geledendiscuss

I remember the set of his shoulders and generally pained body language during that address. He knew it was bullshit, and knew that the world could tell that he was bullshitting. They sent him because out of the four (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Powell), he was the only one regarded as somewhat reliable.

He sold his soul that day and regretted it almost instantly. I agree that the people who put him up to it were also setting him up as they knew he already wasn't really with them on this thing. They were politicians, after all. I have no sympathy for the personal toll it took on him. He's a war criminal like the rest.

3 maanden geledendiscuss

The E3 fleet is aging and difficult to keep airworthy. Of the 32 or so planes the US has, it sounds as though they struggle to keep the operational number above 16, and moving more to the gulf means they have to pull them from other theaters. In short, they simply don't have enough to provide coverage of all the areas they want them.

This was completely foreseeable and is a situation that appears to have arisen entirely due to vest interests stifling procurement of a suitable replacement in order to spruik up business for their own competing, but unfinished offering. Prior to the war in Iran, total cancellation of the procurement of E7's had been announced.

https://theaviationist.com/2026/04/01/e-3-awacs-loss-saudi-a...

4 maanden geledendiscuss

Okay, so this is clearly corrupt, but is it illegal?

If not, add it to the United States Congress' many failings. If it is, since they spy on everything, it really shouldn't be hard to convict everyone who spilled the beans early. There's two halves to every transaction, and every trader probably told at least one other person, so there should be no shortage of people willing to rat on each other.

4 maanden geledendiscuss

pfft, were you still working for a living or something, you leaner?

4 maanden geledendiscuss

You must be young.